Chapter 1. Overview; Introduction; General Description - Altera Cyclone III Reference Manual

Introduction

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General
Description
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Altera Corporation
March 2008
This document describes the hardware features of the Cyclone
development board, including detailed pinout information to enable
designers to create custom FPGA designs that interface with all
components of the board.
For information on setting up and powering up the Cyclone III
development board and using the kit's demo software, please refer to the
Cyclone III Development Kit User Guide.
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The Cyclone III development board provides a hardware platform for
developing and prototyping low-power, high-volume, feature-rich
designs as well as to demonstrate the Cyclone III device's on-chip
memory, embedded multipliers, and the Nios
processor.
With up to 4-Mbits of embedded memory and 288 embedded
18-bit x 18-bit multipliers, the Cyclone III device supplies an abundance
of internal memory while also providing external support for high-speed,
low-latency memory access via dual-channel DDR SDRAM and
low-power SRAM.
Built on TSMC's 65-nm low-power process technology, Cyclone III
devices are designed to provide low static and dynamic power
consumption. Additionally, with the support of the Quartus
software's PowerPlay technology, designs are automatically optimized
for power consumption. Therefore, the Cyclone III development board
provides a power-optimized, integrated solution for memory-intensive,
high-volume applications.
Accordingly, the Cyclone III development board is especially suitable for
wireless, video and image processing, and other high-bandwidth,
parallel processing applications. Through the use of Altera
video and image intellectual property (or other MegaCore
and board expansion connectors, you can enable the inter-operability of
the Cyclone III device, allowing application-specific customization of the
development board.
For more information about the Altera Video and Image Processing Suite
MegaCore functions, refer to the Video and Image Processing Suite User
Guide.
Reference Manual
1. Overview
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Preliminary
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